citibank popmoney. easier banking. standard at citibank. tonight on "nightline," the mystery agent who helped ignite the cia sex scandal is revealed, as president obama speaks out for the first time on the investigation that's ensnared two of his most powerful commanders. and, deadly behavior. it's the most dangerous and widespread eating disorder in the country. and most people have never heard of it. in fact the secret lives of millions of american women battling every bite. >> last time i ate pizza, i had a panic attack. plus, finding bigfoot. meet the rag tag team of researchers trekking across the

globe on the hunt for a legendary beast. >> announcer: from the blglobal resources of abc news, with terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," november 14th, 2012. >> good evening, i'm cynthia mcfadden. tonight, the latest turn in the cia sex scandal, as we learn the identity of the fbi agent who sparked the investigation that brought down one of the nation's most powerful leaders, and is now implicated another. president obama himself spoke out today for the first time since the scandal broke, and my co-anchor terry moran has the latest. >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. >> reporter: as president obama sauntered into the east room of the white house for his post-victory news conference, the scandal that's engulfed the highest levels of his national security team still swirled around him. tonight, abc news has learned the identity of the fbi agent

who ignited the whole staggering chain of events. fredrik humphreys, a 47-year-old fbi veteran who is active in counterterrorism cases, is friends with tampa socialite jill kelley who turned to him when she got some harassing e-mails. meanwhile, in washington, paula broadwell, petraeus' former mistress, who allegedly sent the e-mails to kelley, remained in hiding at her brother's home. today, the fbi said she illegally had classified material at her home in north carolina, though no charges have been filed. jill kelley also remains at her home in tampa. her access to centcom revoked. this afternoon at the white house, president obama finally weighed in on this scandal, declared that no breach of national security occurred and spoke with sadness of the fall of david petraeus. >> general petraeus had an extraordinary career. he served this country with great distinction and my main

hope right now is that he and his family are able to move on and that this ends up being a single side note on what has otherwise been an extraordinary career. >> reporter: but the real takeaway from the white house today? there's nothing like a re-election to give the president a jolt of confidence. >> i've got a mandate to help middle class families and families that are working hard to try to get in the middle class. that's my mandate. >> reporter: gone was the lackluster stumbling obama of the first debate in denver. >> well, ah, ah, ah. >> reporter: and gone, too, was the grimly determined campaigner of the final stretch. >> the status quo in washington has fought us every step of the way. >> reporter: the 44th president today was ready to rumble. you heard and saw it most emphatically when he leapt to

the defense on susan rice, the u.n. ambassador. >> what this began has was a spontaneous, not a premeditated response to what had transpired in cairo. cairo, as you know, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated. >> reporter: rice is now a leading candidate to replace hillary clinton as secretary of state. top republicans led by senators john mccain and lindsey graham, they vowed to block her nomination. >> i don't trust her. and the reason i don't trust her is because i think she knew better and if she didn't know better, she shouldn't be the voice of america. >> reporter: today, an obama smackdown. >> if senator mccain and senator graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. and should i choose, if i think that she would be the best person to serve america, in the

capacity of the state department, then i will nominate her. >> reporter: but wait. isn't this supposed to be a moment for bipartisanship? as the country approaches the fiscal cliff at the end of the year, unless washington can do a deal, what kind of leadership will the newly emboldened barack obama bring to those old bitter debates? >> so, i will, you know, examine ways that i can make sure to communicate my desire to work with everybody. there are probably going to be very sharp differences. >> reporter: bridging those differences or even just beginning to heal them. that's the real task ahead for president obama. >> thanks to terry moran for that. and just ahead, the secret struggle of two young women, battling the deadliest eating disorder. and you probably never heard of it.

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with cynthia mcfadden. >> we were surprised to discover the most common and dangerous eating disorder in america is also the least well known. it's called ednos. more deadly than anorexia or bulimia, it affects millions of people across the country. yet, remains tragically under the radar. tonight, we're pulling back the curtain, thanks to two young women who allowed me this intimate look inside their most private battle. taylor says she wants to like herself. >> looking at myself, i don't like the way i look, at all. >> reporter: but she can't turn off the voice inside her head that tells her she's not good enough. not perfect.

>> it's hard to distinguish between what ed's talking and what's taylor talking. >> reporter: ed, her nickname for her eating disorder. >> they're like, okay, you you have ednos. i'm like, okay, what is that? >> reporter: it stands for eating disorder, not otherwise specified. it encompasses a wide variety of behaviors included in anorexia and bulimia, including restricting and overexercising. in ednos, sufferers don't meet the highly defined criteria for those diagnosis, which doesn't mean they aren't truly sick. >> still a misperception out there that these are relatively benign disorders, diets gone bad. these are life threatening, serious illnesses. the highest mortality of a. >> reporter: at least 12 million, mostly women, have the illness. women like taylor.

taylor's eating disorder began eight years ago when she was 12. the pressure to be thin started long before that. >> i remember once when i was 6, i went to the doctor asking why my thighs were bigger than my friends. >> reporter: she had been secretly bingeing, purging and restricting all through high school, keeping up on her dance team. but feeling fat. have you ever liked the way you like? >> no. not that i ever remember. >> reporter: it wasn't that taylor was losing too much weight, it's that taylor was on a roller coaster. eating too much or too little and den stroiing her health in the process. >> i would just throw lunch away. when i parents started noticing, i kind of switched my similar tops a little bit to the bingeing, purging. >> reporter: didn't they hear you throwing up? >> i would do it when they weren't here. >> reporter: it was when she got to college things went into crisis mode. >> four, five, six, seven. >> reporter: here, front and center on her college dance team. until ednos sidelined her.

>> i think i realized that i was really sick, that i had to quit my team, because i was collapsing during practices. >> reporter: and she realized she needed help. taylor ended up here at the renfrew center, a renowned eating disorder program. we first met her six months ago. >> thank you. >> reporter: at renfrew, the first shock for taylor, the numbers that ruled her life, are not allowed. >> i would weigh myself 7 to 14 times a day. >> reporter: no calorie counting, no scales and no talk of pounds, says dr. dough last bunnell, the vice president of renfrew. >> you really have to help people change their eating, get their brains back online, get their bodies back to a place of functioning regularly. and then the psychological work can really start to take root. >> reporter: the first thing renfrew requires is that taylor eat. at first, just a balanced meal at regular time. that was hard enough. but soon, she had to face her

fear foods. foods she either had forbidden herself or had binged on or both. spaghetti is one of them. it's hard. >> my stomach's very full and i feel like i'm going to cry. >> reporter: each meal is monitored by a they arapist and must be eaten within an hour. >> i struggled with the idea of having an eating disorder. i didn't fit. i was not anorexic, i was not bulimi bulimic, so i don't have an eating disorder. >> reporter: we met another young woman, also battling ednos. 23-year-old allie. unlike taylor, for allie, once an ivy league softball pitcher, i wasn't about losing weight, it was about regaining her strength. when a shoulder injury sidelined her, she became obsessed with getting back on the field. >> i had this idea that somehow, if i controlled what i ate, i could never get hurt again. >> reporter: she says she restricted to super foods, or so-called clean food.

>> it's this idea of strict, rigid, food rule. it was planning every single meal, portioning, measuring so that i had just not too much, not too little. >> reporter: she just wanted to be alone. >> i did an excellent job of isolating and pushing my friends a way. >> reporter: she stopped dating. she worked out constantly. in 13 months, she lost 75 pounds. not only was allie not back on the field, she stopped men tr t menstruatin menstruating, lost her ability to concentrate, was always cold and had night sweats. >> i was scared. i didn't know what was happening. >> reporter: for allie, it's meal support treatment. things are going better. >> how are you feeling physically and emotionally? >> i feel satisfied. emotionally, i feel good i was able to eat slowly, enjoy the food. >> reporter: when we checked back in with taylor four weeks after her struggle to eat pastp,

we arrived on pizza day. >> it's a challenge with me. >> reporter: ed is still wassing in her head. sitting with your empty plate is hard? >> yeah, you look at it and you think, i just ate all of that. >> reporter: taylor's therapist tries to get her to talk about how she's feeling. >> how was your meal? >> reporter: and suddenly, all the pain comes bubbling out. >> it was really hard. >> okay. >> the last time i ate pizza, i tried it at home, it was only a couple of times, but i had panic attacks. i didn't have that much anxiety coming into it but once i saw it all on the plate, and then just seeing it now, it just -- i don't feel good. >> reporter: some of the things that you all are having these young women eat seem unhealthy. chinese food, fast food, even. pizza. >> our goal is not to have them choose to eat pizza.

our goal is to help them learn the skills they can use to deal with challenging situations and generalize from that. >> reporter: after months of treatment, both allie and taylor graduate g the renfrew program. which does not mean life is easy. even the simple act of shopping for food is still stressful for taylor. >> when you fill up the cart, i'll have a panic atake. >> reporter: would you say you can cure people of an eating disorderer? >> i think people can fully recover but it takes quite awhile. the actual recovery rates, at the end of the treatment, are between 50% and 60% and that's a little generous. >> reporter: as for allie, she is making great strides. aware her eating disorder is still apart of her life, she has returned to her first love. softball. teaching young girls. >> but i have aways to go and to fool yourself into thinking you're not going to have setbacks is setting yourself up to relapse. >> reporter: taylor returned to college this fall and is now

captain of the dance team. >> eventually i'm be totally 100% okay and all the thoughts are gone. i'm still working towards that. >> reporter: ed, she says, is speaking a little more quietly. for more information on helping those with ednos, visit abcnews.com/nightline. next up, the search for a big, hairy beast that may not even exist. meet a dedicated team of big foot hunters. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] they are a glowing example of what it means to be the best. and at this special time of year, they shine even brighter. come to the winter event and get the mercedes-benz you've always wished for, now for an exceptional price. [ santa ] ho, ho, ho, ho! [ male announcer ] lease a 2013 glk350 for $399 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer.

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bigfoot, sasquatch or yeti. this beast has long fascinated and alluded believers and skeptics alike.

but one devoted team is still holding out hope that it might be only a few giant footprints away. here's abc's neal karlinsky from seattle. >> reporter: you're about to meet a rag tag team of globe trotting researchers who are as serious about big foot as the pope is about religion. big foot, yeti, it's often a punch line. people are incredibly skeptical. >> you get punched if you say a joke about stuff around me. >> reporter: like we said, that are really into bigfoot. never mind the fact that the only thing anyone knows for sure about the legendary beast is that it has been wildly successful at filling tabloids, being the subject of terrible b movies. and generally serving as an all-around punch line. >> about what height did you see these guys? >> they were up higher than your hand. >> that's a big boy. >> reporter: matt moneymaker and his team are real life bigfoot

hunters. with every bit of cutting edge technology, night vision gear and sensors, they can get their hands on, the group travels the world investigating bigfoot sightings. why are people fascinated by bigfoot. >> well, first, it's more than one. it's not bigfoot, it's bigfoots. there's a misconception that we're looking for one thing. >> reporter: their adventures make up two and soon to be three seasons of the animal planet show, "finding bigfoot." why is there no good fee toe of video? >> we have photos and video of basically everything, every species known to man, but no bigfoot. >> yeah, you do. there's a photo right there. >> reporter: that famous photo and the film to go with it, known as the patterson film was taken in 1967. and to our surprise, it's no joke to the bigfoot crew. which studied it and even tried to recreate it to finally determine if it was staged. most people look at this, say this is a guy in a suit. >> well, they're wrong. this has a lot more muscle mass.

when you see it in motion, there's parts of the anatomy. if you know what somebody in a costume looks like and you see that in motion, you know that really doesn't look like a person in a costume. >> reporter: they stududy track too. >> oh, yeah. >> reporter: evidence, they say, of an unidentified, large pry mat-like beast with, you guessed it, very big feet. >> i think they're more like a person, like just a wild kind of primitive man that, they can talk -- i've heard them team out in the woods. >> reporter: they say they've identified a bigfoot call. here's your chance to turn up the volume on your television and see if anything stranges comes knocking. [ yelling ] >> reporter: just be sure to keep a camera handy if anything shows up. i'm neal carlin skill fkar lili "nightline" in seattle. >> all right then. well, our thanks to neal. "finding bigfoot" airs sunday on animal planet. thank you for watching abc news.